Living the high life on donor money

In US politics, money plays a huge role because of the length of the campaigns and the high cost of TV ads. It is only a minor exaggeration to say that a better predictor than opinion polls of who is going to win a race is to look at which side raised more money. This is why media organizations eagerly report the fund-raising totals that are regularly released, though the relaxing of campaign financing rules means that nowadays a lot of that money can be kept hidden. As a result, the correlation between fund-raising and electoral success was perhaps more true before the narrow 5-4 US Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case in 2010 that prohibited “the government from restricting independent expenditures for political campaigns by corporations, including nonprofit corporations, labor unions, and other associations”. That decision opened the floodgates for much more so-called ‘dark money’ than before, so that now even minor candidates in lower tier races can raise huge sums.

One result is that some candidates and parties running campaigns have chosen to live the high life on campaign cash, using it to fund private jet travel, limousines, resorts, and any other aspect of a fancy lifestyle that they thought they could pass off as a campaign expense. For example, this report describes what the Republican National Committee has been spending money on.
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GOP: The party that can’t count straight

The US House of Representatives is structured so as to give the speaker, who is selected by the majority party, almost total control over what legislation comes to the floor for a vote. This means that you are almost guaranteed that when the speaker put a bill before the house, it is because they are confident that they have the votes to pass it. When Nancy Pelosi was the speaker, she was an accurate vote counter and never lost a vote.

But yesterday, the GOP lost a vote. This was not over a trivial issue but a vote to impeach homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. A major goal of the GOP is to impeach someone, anyone, as revenge for the two impeachments of serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) but their efforts to do so against Joe Biden are floundering because they cannot find any grounds for dong so. They decided on Mayorkas because he deals with border security and accusing him of failing to protect the country advances that agenda too. Not everyone in the GOP was happy with the idea of frivolously using the impeachment process this way and three of the GOP members said that they planned to vote vote against the measure but the speaker went ahead with the planned vote anyway.
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Using outrageous statements to make a nice living

There are a large number of right wing people that one hears about who have a penchant for saying the most outrageous things. right wing media and use that as a route to financial success.

Take, for example, Candace Owens who is employed by the website The Daily Wire as a columnist. She started out as a political activist by criticizing the Republican party and serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) but then suddenly in 2017 she became a conservative and started attacking the usual targets of the extreme right wing. She is now a pro-Trump conspiracy-spouting election denier who seems to be a popular figure in right wing circles despite not saying anything worthwhile. She is not alone. The last decade has produced a regular stream of such people.
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What kind of immigrants should the US admit?

The issue of the border and migration is a politically charged issue. Republicans have seized upon it as one of the few concrete issues that they think can help them win elections, since their other issues involve culture wars that do not seem to have gained much traction. So desperate are they to keep this issue alive that the speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson, urged on by serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT), has promised to torpedo a bipartisan plan negotiated by Republicans and Democrats in the Senate to deal with the border issue, so that it will not be resolved before the election, even though the plan seems to give hard-line Republicans almost every thing that they had demanded.

Opponents to any attempt to deal with the border issues have exploited the xenophobia that is always lurking in the minds of people to view anything other that harsh exclusionary treatment of those seeking asylum as constituting an ‘open borders’ policy that will destroy the US. This xenophobia is laced with racism since the immigrants they are concerned about stopping are people of color, while SSAT has bemoaned that they are not people from Europe who would no doubt be welcomed into the country.
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(Almost) everyone is having fun with the Taylor Swift conspiracy theories

The ridiculous conspiracy theories that are circling around the singer and the Super Bowl are a source of great amusement to me and to a lot of others. I had thought that Swift had become a big star just in the last couple of years but it turns out that that was because I had not been paying attention. She has been performing for 17 years and selling out stadiums for a long time. But while that level of success made her a household name among those who follow popular music, her relationship with an NFL football player has thrust her in front of a much wider audience, people like me who had only been dimly aware of her.

The wild idea that she is a part of a ‘psyop’ operation by the Pentagon has clearly created amusement in that austere institution.

The claims by Fox News and far-right influencers that pop star Taylor Swift is part of a Pentagon “psychological operation” to get President Joe Biden reelected, and somehow rig the Super Bowl to benefit Kansas City Chiefs tight end (and Swift’s boyfriend) Travis Kelce, has been met with forehead slaps in the national security world.

“The absurdity of it all boggles the mind,” said one senior administration official, granted anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly on the matter. “It feels like one of those ‘tell me you are a MAGA conspiracy theorist, without telling me you are a MAGA conspiracy theorist’ memes.”
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Faced with an onslaught of journalist questions about the theory, spokesperson Sabrina Singh was ready for it.

In the name of being honest, Singh vehemently denied Swift is part of a DOD operation.

“We know all too well the dangers of conspiracy theories, so to set the record straight — Taylor Swift is not part of a DOD psychological operation. Period,” Singh told POLITICO.

Of course, that is what people behind such an operation would say, no? Don’t be fooled, sheeple!

(Jack Ohman)
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Film review: Rustin (2023)

Bayard Rustin played a major role in the civil rights struggle in the US but his name is not nearly as well known as it should be. This film, streamed on Netflix, tries to correct that deficiency. It is not a full biopic since it focuses almost entirely on the eight weeks in which Rustin organized the August 28, 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on the National Mall that culminated with Martin Luther King’s famous ‘I have a dream’ speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. That drew about 250,000 people from all over the country and was instrumental in pressuring president Kennedy and the Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act that had been stalled.

Rustin was multi-talented, a charismatic speaker and an indefatigable and inspiring organizer whom young people rallied to. His idea for the march met with resistance from the old guard Black establishment in the NAACP that wanted a more go-slow, less confrontational approach in dealing with Congress and Kennedy. Rustin allied himself with veteran labor leader A. Philip Randolph to argue that they could pull off a massive march in such a short time. Both sides vied to get King on board with their side. Rustin was an old friend of King and his family and once he got King’s agreement to speak, he went full throttle to get the event organized in just two months. It remains one of the landmark events in the fight for civil rights in the US.
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Taylor Swift drives the MAGA world bonkers

The singer has become such a massive pop culture phenomenon that her every action now receives scrutiny even from the mainstream media, where once it would have been just the preserve of the tabloids and the paparazzi. She has had such an impact that even I, someone who is totally out of touch with popular culture and have never heard a single song of hers, know something about her and have now mentioned her in posts on two consecutive days.

As far as I can tell, Swift is not a political activist. She does not use social media to talk about politics or Biden or serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) nor does she do political fundraisers. She did endorse Joe Biden in 2020 and posed with a plate of Biden-Harris cookies. She has also supported a voter registration drive last year but that is a politically neutral activity, though for Republicans increasing voter turnout is seen as a nefarious act. That is about it. But even those fairly innocuous acts seem to have driven members of the MAGA cult round the bend. They seem to think that Swift is some kind of Democratic deep-state operative and that the whole media focus around Swift and her relationship with a football player is part of a sinister plan to … well, it is not exactly clear what the plan seeks to achieve and how.
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Taylor Swift, revenge porn, and deepfakes

If there were ever a title to a post that could be considered pure clickbait, my title would fit the bill, since it blends three of the biggest news items currently going: Taylor Swift, porn, and AI. The media attention that Swift is getting both for her music and her relationship with a football player is astounding. I have not heard her music nor do I follow football but thanks to the ubiquity of the coverage of her in the news, I know that she is in a relationship with someone playing for the Kansas City Chiefs. Why this receives such massive coverage from even mainstream news outlets mystifies me.

But my post is really using those three things to argue that the current ability of anyone to so easily produce deepfakes using AI may well herald the demise of some truly ugly practices.

It turns out that someone had used Swift’s image to create a pornographic video that appeared on Twitter/X. The site took down the video and blocked searches on the singer’s name but not before the video had amassed a huge number of views.
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Nancy Pelosi makes baseless charges against those calling for ceasefire in Gaza

The Democratic former speaker of the House is one of those who gives unquestioned support to Israel whatever it does. Norman Solomon says that her latest statement shows how out of touch she is with popular sentiment on what is happening in Gaza.

“The former House speaker said, without offering evidence, that she believed some protesters are connected to Russian President Vladimir Putin,” NPR reported.

“For them to call for a ceasefire is Mr. Putin’s message,” Pelosi said. “Make no mistake, this is directly connected to what he would like to see. Same thing with Ukraine. It’s about Putin’s message. I think some of these protesters are spontaneous and organic and sincere. Some, I think, are connected to Russia. And I say that having looked at this for a long time now.”

Like Congress as a whole, Pelosi refuses to acknowledge that so many Americans are protesting because the Israeli armed forces have been engaged in mass murder in Gaza for more than three and a half months. And an inconvenient truth is that polling shows a large majority of people in the United States favor a ceasefire, including over 70 percent of young voters who say they disapprove of President Joe Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza. 

Pelosi is hardly unusual on Capitol Hill. Bipartisan loyalty to Israel has been the political reflex, with few exceptions. But Pelosi is notably servile to Israel.
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But there’s also another key aspect of Pelosi’s nonsensical yet calculated smear effort. Biden’s poll numbers have kept dropping, most recently while so many Americans – especially those whose votes he’ll need this fall – find his support for the Gaza slaughter repugnant. Grasping at straws, Pelosi evidently hopes for some political benefit by casting blame on Russia for how Biden’s deference to Israel has met with strong public opposition and erosion of support for re-election.
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Like President Biden and so many others in the political establishment, Nancy Pelosi cannot imagine breaking with the murderous Israeli government and pursuing a foreign policy of peace instead of nonstop U.S. efforts to dominate as much of the world as possible.

The tragedy of Gaza keeps growing

What is happening in Gaza is tragic on a scale that is hard to wrap one’s mind around. Israel is pursuing a ruthless and vindictive policy of making life hell for everyone in Gaza. Its proclamations that it is only targeting Hamas fighters ring blatantly hollow as its troops attacks hospitals, schools, refugee camps, and homes, leaving almost the entire population homeless and suffering from lack of food, water, medicines, and power. We are seeing before our eyes an utterly cruel policy of vengeance by Israel against the people of Gaza in which the US is complicit. Currently over 27,000 people are dead, about 70% of them women and children.

Much of the world is watching in horror, helpless to do anything as long as the US shields Israel and continues to provide it with the resources to continue its inhumane policies. The International Court of Justice has largely sided with South Africa in the case they brought before it that accused Israel of genocide.
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